


Three Keys in a Disparate Symphony

by rainer76



Category: Fringe
Genre: Episode tag for 5:02 and 5:01, Gen, Song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 21:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76





	Three Keys in a Disparate Symphony

_I’ve heard there was a secret chord_

_That David played, and it pleased the Lord_

_But you don’t really care for music, do you?_

_It goes like this_

_The fourth, the fifth_

_The minor fall, the major lift_

_The baffled king composing Hallelujah_

 

     - John Cale - as sung by Astrid Farnsworth.

 

***

ONE:

 

  
“Children were easier,” Olivia confesses, her voice hushed.  She takes a sip from the flask, allows the whiskey to sit in the back of her throat then swallows. 

They’re stationed in a resistance base twenty metres underground, deep in the forest.  Sleeping alcoves are etched out of the walls; kerosene lamps cast sallow figures.  Olivia can hear Astrid’s song in the background, sweet harmonics amplified.  “Ella, Phillip’s son, the Observer child, Etta…I always found a way to connect with children and it was _seamless,_ Peter, I never had to try _._ She’s my only child and so --”

“Here.”  Peter takes the flask from her, pulls a sharp draught for himself then doses the wound.  Olivia hisses, fingers scrabbling against his thigh. The gash across her ribcage turns white-hot, feral. His mouth twists ruefully.  “Sorry.”

“I want a re-write.  I don’t want to be cheated of watching her grow up, I don’t want her to grow up like this.”

“I’ll add it to the list.”

“There’s a list?”

“Astrid started it.  It’s filed under: “Irritated.”

“She’s a minimalist, isn’t she?” 

Olivia’s shirt is clamped under her armpits, his fingers soft against her belly.  Other than their desperate clutch when Olivia emerged from amber this is the most intimate they’ve been.

Peter was always better at adolescents - Tyler, Matt Jarvis, Lisa Donovan, he told her jokingly his internal brat found them easy to relate to - but she envies his relaxed way with Etta, how they just work together, seamless; whereas her and Etta seem so much more awkwardly _intense._

Peter looks at her, eyes dark, and says carefully.  “She’s not a teenager either, you know.”

“Did I say that aloud?”  She doesn’t remember being affected by alcohol so readily.  The wound in her side throbs, keeping beat with her pulse.

“Twenty years in amber.  Your metabolism is shot to hell, plus, I think the whiskey is a hundred per cent proof.”

It’s safe behind her eyelids. Olivia’s listened to Peter’s confession –heard how he was sorry for abandoning her.  It’s the first opportunity Olivia’s had to talk, to state _her_ version of events and her lips seem numb.  “I think Etta knows,” she whispers.  “I think Etta knows you never stopped looking.  It hurt…so much.    _I_ \- we - needed you, and you dragged Etta’s ghost around like a ball and chain, you wouldn’t move _on_ and I – “ The Observer’s first gambit was to destroy an entire building.  Emergency services, police, everything fell apart within days and the chances of finding a single three year old girl in the midst of all that chaos.  There were more _important_ things Olivia needed to do. 

Her chest spasms, the alcohol turns sour in her stomach.

“Olivia, no.” For the first time, Peter looks genuinely angry.  “Whatever thought you’re about to voice – no one even _considered_ it.  It was never a litmus test as to who loved her more.”

“Sometimes you made it feel that way.” 

It’s a relief to say.  She can see how it strikes him - barbed and low - how his fingers flinch against her skin. Olivia lays her own palm on top to keep him steady.  “Back then I was so certain Etta was gone forever.  I was angry.  And now it’s hard to look her in the eye.  It’s hard to - ” She breaks off mid-sentence; her wound matched with an older, festering, one, because she doesn’t know how to mother a child ten years younger than her, and she doesn’t know what advice to offer in a world shifted beyond recognition. “Neither of us achieved what we set out to do, the Observer’s are still here, Etta was never found as a child, but in the wake of those failures at least she _knows_ how much you loved her - “ Once upon a time, Peter would have leant forward.  He would have kissed her, said the right words at the exact moment Olivia needed to hear them.  He would have told her _We’re here now, we’ll finish this, together._ Instead, he stands up, staggers away, and Olivia thinks she’s laid a different set of blame on his shoulders.  _This is how you made me feel.  Intentional or not._   Olivia presses her palm against the wound in her side, squeezes her eyes shut against frustration.  She wants to move past this nest of poison, she wants to tell him _Don’t adapt to this world, for Etta’s sake, if not your own._ Peter returns five minutes later with tape and gauze, A-grade medical thread.  He pushes her hands away, head lowered with concentration.  

“Etta’s spent half of her time in the resistance searching for us, so I guess she managed both of our tasks. She’s not a child and she’s not an adolescent.” Peter looks her in the eye.  “She’s an adult, and she knows better than to doubt how much you love her, Olivia.  Etta knows _exactly_ what you were fighting for.”

“Tell me about Astrid’s list,” Olivia rasps, and lets her fingers curl into his jacket sleeve. 

He sews her up, one careful stitch at a time.

 

 

***

TWO:

 

On the first night Etta found Astrid and Peter, they holed up in a safe-house located in District Five, a two bedroom apartment with clean facilities and a working computer.  Astrid and herself took the rooms while the boy’s bedded down on the couches. 

She spent the night fixating on her mother, a tightrope of anxiety and awe.  The field reports Etta had read - the so-called feats Olivia had performed, the spare writing style and sharp observations in her mother’s outdated notes - these had been Etta’s fairytales - fingers wrapped tightly around the mangled bullet September had gifted.

In their search for Olivia, they abandoned the first safe-house within twenty-four hours.

It was Peter who procured the van, hot-wiring a vehicle off the street while Etta performed a final sweep of the apartment.  There wasn’t much evidence to suggest they’d resided there; beds were remade, four egg-wrappings were dumped in the garbage bin, evidence that Astrid, at least, had eaten breakfast.  The spare blankets were folded and put aside.  Etta had strolled from room to room, poked her head through each door then checked the search engine on the computer as a final precaution.

Astrid had awoken first that morning – they’d found her sitting in front of the computer, showered and neatly dressed, a cup of tea beside her, playing scrabble.  When Etta double-checked the computer, she found eight games had been successfully completed and in between, three Internet searches performed.  _Mae Warwick._   _Jody Harper._   _Joseph Farnsworth._   Etta had recognised none of the names – although the final one in block print was self-evident.  13/04/1952 to the 17/08/2019. 

Etta had stared at those dates for a long minute, stark and final, then wiped all record of the search from the computer and crashed the system. 

She’d grabbed her knapsack from the floor, took the stairwell to the ground level, and claimed the passenger seat in the van.

The second safe-house – (after finding Olivia, and then, recovering Walter _This is the worst game of musical chairs ever_ , Peter had hissed) – could have been a cookie cut-out of their previous residence.  Astrid had smiled at her, diminutive and self-contained - she’d fussed over Walter, joked with Peter, spent long minutes whispering with Olivia – and Etta kept the other woman on the periphery of her vision. But at the time, Etta had been preoccupied with Olivia.  No longer a story-book hero or a distant memory but bones and flesh come to life.  She spent most of the morning trying to stop _staring,_ noting how Olivia’s gaze kept skittering away; to realign the fantasy of childhood with the human reality before her.  _I like to be special_ – and Etta _does_ – she’s grateful for it.  The Observer’s had never scanned Etta. Inevitably, when they find Simon and fail to find her (and they won’t, they never do) the Observer’s will redirect their questions toward Phillip Broyles instead; hold him accountable for his agents and their crimes.   Etta would pity him, if she weren’t uncertain as to his loyalties.  She spent that morning desperate to connect, to say, _we’re alike, you and I._

It’s been three days since Etta tortured Manfretti – since she saw the troubled assessment in Olivia’s eyes and something else too, pity, unwilling to bend any further for this world.   Manfretti said he saw certainty - conviction that they were going to win, the determination to make it happen - like the first cracks in a winter pond, Olivia’s presence heralds change.  And it’s no longer a case of _we’re alike you and I_ , but rather, _I hope to be like you._

Etta turns the switch over in her hands.  They took everything they could carry from Harvard lab, the betamax tape, random objects that had been gathering dust on the shelves.  Astrid and Etta have been sorting through the collection, dragging their stash outside into the fresh air.  "What is this?"

Astrid, propped against the wall in the sunshine, opens one eye.  “It’s Walter’s prototype for an amber grenade…his contingency plan.”

Wary, Etta places it aside and nudges it back a few feet.  “It won’t detonate unexpectedly?”

“No.  The charge is dead.  The first prototype didn’t contain much gas, barely enough to encase an arm.  Second generation wasn’t so bulky, slimmer design and easy to carry around in a coat pocket.”  Astrid stares at the prototype, her expression distant.  “We all carried them – everyone except Peter, that is.”

Etta follows the line of Astrid’s throat, the flare of delicate collarbones and shoulders.  She knows the other woman’s morning ritual, how she names the constellations at night.  How in the absence of turntables Astrid will sing to Walter, gentle him with background music.  She knows her smile and her grace, and the three names she typed onto a computer screen. 

Absently, Etta wonders who Mae and Jody were, what they meant to Astrid, how they fitted with her daily life.   She’s trying to learn how to ask the right _question_ \- to determine the correct connection - to see a bag of breadcrumbs for what they were and not through a veil of paranoia. Etta frowns, turning Astrid’s words over in her mind.  She recalls how they were initially found, the placement of bodies, hands upraised or lowered, the careful distance between them, facing opposing directions, walking away. 

Astrid rubs the sole of her foot against the dirt and elaborates.  “Peter was unwilling or unable to stop searching for you.  We barely saw him back then - and Walter wasn’t going _anywhere_ without his son - let’s just say your grandfather didn’t ask permission before he pulled the pin.”

“He ambered Peter against his will?”  Etta deduces.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you.  I remember my last thought was: If we were ever recovered and found - if we were ever freed from amber - Peter would kill Walter.”  She pushes the curls from her eyes and adds solemnly.  “But first there was running away from Metro, and then there was you, right there with us.  Your presence did an awful lot to nullify that explosion, so thank you, Etta Bishop, for saving me from a _terrible_  headache.”

Etta follows Astrid’s gaze to where Olivia, Peter and Walter are standing, knotted together.  The discussion appears to be animated, but then, she saw Walter animated over a slug yesterday. “I got you something,” Etta says abruptly.  She pulls a folded sheet of paper from her jacket’s inner pocket and holds it out.  “I thought…well...I thought you might want to know.”

Curiously, Astrid accepts it. 

Mae Warwick changed her name in 2021 to Margaret Jennings.  She’s still alive.  The photo depicts a woman in her mid to late fifties, dark and tall.  Her hair is kept in silver braids, her cheekbones high, and despite the marks of time Etta recognises her beauty.  She teaches primary school in North Carolina and is listed as married, to one Jennifer Rheys.  Astrid runs her fingertip down the photo.  She quietens so abruptly Etta can barely hear her breathe.  “I’m sorry.  Jody Harper didn’t survive the second purge.”

“I could have typed in Tim, or Colonel Broyles.  I could have typed in my academy graduates but – “ Astrid doesn’t take her eyes from the photo, they seem too bright, watering in the sun, her smile wavers.  “I was trying to gather courage before I typed in my dad.”  In the distance, Walter sweeps both arms out, tilting at windmills.  Olivia ducks and Peter leans back far enough to avoid the hit.  Oblivious, Walter continues as if he hadn’t tried to beat them both around the body. “She was my first kiss – but I haven’t seen Mae since I was sixteen.  It seemed like a safe place to start.”

Etta’s not good at comfort, either accepting it or knowing how to provide it.  She says, inanely: “I didn’t know you were gay.”

Astrid turns, looks at her directly.  “For the record, it’s not your parents you need to worry about; it’s what you inherited from Walter.”  Etta winces, flailing internally while trying to extract her foot from her mouth.  Astrid ducks her head, the twitch of her smile giving her away. 

With as much dignity as Etta can muster, she says.  “I’m more than the sum of my parts.”

The laugh this time is genuine. Astrid’s gaze is diamond sharp, edges in all directions.  “Too true.”

The photograph of Mae is wrinkled from Etta’s pocket.  She thinks no one knew because it wasn’t relevant to the job, it didn’t affect how Astrid performed it and maybe, there was a part of Astrid’s life she reserved for herself, untouched by the Dunham’s or Bishop’s of the world.   Gay or not the information wasn’t relevant, except for all the ways it might be relevant to Etta.

“When I was a child, my dad used to say to me, ‘you’ll understand when you grow older.’  He used to say it so often, for half the questions I ever asked.  It was his golden egg for the times he was too tired to answer.  I remember thinking there must be some magical change – that you reached twenty-one and underwent a personality alteration.  Gained confidence overnight and everything would be so clear.  I couldn’t _wait_ until my twenty-first birthday.”

“How old were you?”

“I don’t know, maybe seven or eight, I’m still disappointed it wasn’t true.  There’s no certainty as an adult – no sudden flick of the switch - everyone is fumbling their way through, only with less hormones and fewer pimples.  And the only thing you understand, is that adults don’t have all the answers.”

Etta watches as Olivia and Peter break away, heading toward them, shoulders bumping. 

They’d shared the same quarters in the second safe-house.  Peter had moved the single bed from the room and dumped it into the master bedroom.  Walter had taken the couch.  Astrid and Etta had shacked up together in the master room, beds arranged in a T.   Olivia and Peter had taken the floor in the spare room, sleeping bags laid out with a respectable distance between them.  

The distance has been closing ever since, Etta’s noticed. 

Last night, Peter had zipped the bags together into a double without a word when the temperature dropped below zero.  Etta had tiptoed past them this morning, toes flinching against the cold.  Peter was sound asleep and fully dressed, but Olivia’s hand was carding through the hair at his nape.  Etta had paused for half a beat, long enough to see Olivia’s eyes open, then kept walking. 

“Fringe is basically police now, and Metro is armed security, but I still have contacts to ferret out information.  If there’s anyone you’d like me to look up – or veto, if you want to meet them again – you’ll let me know?”

“Yes.”  Astrid refolds the photograph carefully, tucks it into her jean pocket and stands up.  “Thank you...for thinking of it.”  Astrid dusts her bottom off and walks briskly toward Olivia. 

Peter nods at her as he ambles by. “Etta, the device you used on Manfretti, do you still have it?”

“Why?  Do you want to destroy it?”

“Nope.  I want to return it to its original function.” 

Peter had woken up in 2036 thinking he’d have to find her, jumped tracks and set his sights on Olivia, had thirty-seconds of immense relief then barrelled onwards, trying to recover Walter. By the time they came up with the Trojan horse and found her grandfather’s whereabouts, Peter had gone from determined, near violent, to downright _ruthless._    And there wasn’t a single part Etta hadn’t approved of.  Dark chasms and natural light, she recognises herself in Peter, the two of them nimble as thieves.  He feels like home and Olivia the bright promise of something better.   Etta isn’t certain why that makes her throat tighten, or her palms sweat.  Knowing in her bones Olivia’s going to save them.  Or why she wakes up each morning with her hand fisted around a bullet, and a refrain on her lips.  _Don’t die, mom.  Please don’t die._ Etta blinks.  “You want to prepare someone for time-travel?”

“Olivia has a plan…well….a contingency.”

“A contingency for our contingency?”

“She’s like an onion.”

“As long as she doesn’t scatter her plan to the four winds and buries it.  Did Walter always have a secret love for treasure hunts?”

Peter grins, and counts off on his fingers.  “One teleportation device, found in four separate safety deposit boxes.  Scientific files buried within the walls of my childhood home.  The family car locked in a storage facility on the other side of the city, with a disembodied hand floating in murky water?  Yeah, let’s see, that would be a yes, a yes, and a yes.”

Etta’s nose scrunches.  “The device is in my knapsack.  And who’s hand was it?”

 

 

***

 

THREE

 

 

The building comes down around their ears – Phillip Broyles final act of defiance – and he takes Windmark with him. 

Olivia and Peter are in the basement when it happens, having recovered tape six of nine.   She has one stark moment to realise they’re not going to get out in time, and then the walls ripple and the floor buckles.  Olivia plants her hand in Peter’s spine and shoves.  He’s already turning toward her, feet tangled, the momentum of her push causing him to fall backward.  He snags her by the wrist and tugs, and they land in the alcove together, prone, the wind knocked out of them. 

Olivia doesn’t lose consciousness. 

It’s like standing in an elevator with the doors wide open, watching the floors rush by.  An atomic explosion of dust and mortar: of unrelenting _weight,_ slabs of concrete that shake the ground.  She has both of her forearms braced on either side of Peter’s head, face buried in his chest, and she’s deaf in the aftermath.  It’s complete darkness and choking for air.  It’s thirty seconds of her heartbeat jackrabbiting before Olivia realises, _somehow,_ they’re both alive. 

For the first half hour, she can’t hear past the ringing in her skull.  There’s concrete directly in front of her, and if Olivia kicks outward with her foot, concrete directly behind her, two slabs and a third that landed on top, forming a bridge.  If she arches her spine and tries to reach upward, the dimensions become alarmingly clear.  The rubble groans like a live thing, snaps and pops, the rat-a-tat-tat of falling debris, of the building shifting around them. 

Somewhere, water is dripping.

“How long can two people survive in a coffin?” she asks, when she feels Peter blink against her cheek.

“An hour, maybe less.  You probably used up entire minutes of my life with that sentence.  But luckily for you, we’re not in a coffin.”   He tries to shift under her.  “Olivia, sweetheart, I’m never going to father another child unless you move your knee.”

“Sorry.  There’s airflow?”

“Yeah, near my right hand.”

She follows the contour of his forearm and wrist, his knuckles tacky with blood, and tangles their fingers together.  She feels it: air, barely perceptible.  “Okay.  Good.  That’s good.”  They fall silent after that.  The Observer’s will find them, dig them out of the rubble, and it’s not an option that appeals in the slightest.  Olivia has a daughter she wants to _know_ and a war she needs to win.  She has a skill-set she hasn’t used in years, that she thought ended with a single bullet.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Numbers.”

“Like the numbers involved in air flow and confined spaces?”

“Like the numbers involved in us.  Two years of attraction, followed by two years of learning how to trust each other outside of work.  Three years of wedded bliss and then three months of bona fide hell.  I’m a little worried about what the fours will bring.”

“Firstly, no wonder you wanted me to teach Etta math.  And secondly, the fours are going to be awesome.”

“They are?”

“Absolutely.”  Peter declares blithely, and raises his head high enough to kiss Olivia on the tip of her nose.  

She startles, feels the blossom of warmth in her chest, how her smile is only hidden by the dark, and imagines light unfurling.  His second kiss is slower, not aimed for her nose.  It's hotter, and she wants to be somewhere more comfortable than under a tonne of debris.  She wants to be somewhere else. When they appear in front of Etta, they’re covered in white dust.

Astrid squeezes Etta's hand, on the other side of their daughter, Walter raises his chin, unfazed by their sudden appearance.   “About time,” he says, grumpily. 

Olivia looks at them, then looks in the direction of the bedroom and whispers.  "So close."

"I can tutor you in math and spacial awareness, too, if you like?"


End file.
